ToY Finalist Megan Margerum

A Voice for Personalized Learning

ELA educator at Northern Cass hopes being named finalist for Teacher of the Year reflects highly on school’s approach.

By Kelly Hagen, kelly.hagen@ndunited.org

Megan Margerum, an English Language Arts teacher for third graders at Northern Cass Public School, believes in developing the skills, competencies and abilities of her students by building meaning and agency within them as learners. She said she came to this conclusion partially by observing what used to drive her as a student and now as an educator.

“For me, I needed to see things, and I wanted to create,” Margerum said. “And a lot of kids are like that; they just need a hands-on approach. There are (also) kids that don’t want that. They just want to read by themselves, go through it, answer the questions, and they’re done. Our kids are so different.”

By engaging each student’s unique style of learning and their interests, Margerum believes you can tap into that enthusiasm and build a lifelong love for learning.

“When they’re passionate about something, they will do it for you,” she said. “They love learning when it’s something they’re really interested in or passionate about. How can you put that into the curriculum for them, so that if they love basketball or they love Pokemon, how can we put that into the lesson?”

In Margerum’s room, she keeps a bell that the students are invited to ring when they can show they are proficient in something. “And then we all stop,” she said, “and they will say, ‘I was proficient at main idea today.’ And then everybody claps for them, and they get a little badge – a paper badge that I’ve laminated, and then they get to put it on a little ring. ... I think it’s so cool because you can see how proud they are and how much they work towards that.”

Margerum’s opportunity to “ring the bell” for herself came earlier this year when she was chosen as Teacher of the Year, first at Northern Cass and subsequently for Cass County.

“I was just shocked because there are so many amazing educators,” she said, “that I was like, there’s no way. And then after that, we had to do some more work for North Dakota Teacher of the Year, and she called me and told me that I was top four. Again, (I was) shocked because there’s so many people.”

She hopes her achievements can help shine a light on all the positive work being done at Northern Cass. “I wanted to get my name out there,” Margerum said. “Just like, these are some of the things we’re doing here at Northern Cass, and I would love to be kind of that leader of other districts going to personalized learning and just sharing our story.”